I am thrilled for Purcell: he is more than deserving of this move. This is a case in which a wonderful position has gone to an equally wonderful candidate. Boy, can this guy do great things with a horse like this under him.

And I am deeply impressed with Amazon’s insight. As several observers are noting in our chatter about the appointment, Seattle is much smarter than a lot of the surrounding publishing establishment has been. Purcell is a man one of the majors should have tapped long ago. Amazon is making a thoroughly apt, intelligent selection, bravo.

Purcell is, most recently, editorial director with Dublin’s venerable New Island Books. He has been a commissioning editor there, as well, and at Mercier Press.

He also worked in the past as publishing manager at Nonsuch Ireland, now the History Press Ireland. Devoted to his country, he founded and has publishedThe Irish Story — an online magazine and ebook publisher focused on Irish history — and the Irish Publishing News. He’s been an Irish Times columnist.

Eoin Purcell

In the international community, many of us in publishing have known Purcell for years as a dependably independent, relentlessly balanced thinker.

I’ve learned to look to him when I needed to test a position that sounded extreme.

Inevitably what I got back was rational, reasoned, often refreshing because it wasn’t the hair-trigger snarl-back we get too much of in publishing.

For that reason, when I interviewed Purcell in one of my live #PorterMeetssessions for The Bookseller, I opened the write this way:

When all about you are losing their heads, Mr. Kipling, it’s Eoin Purcell you want nearby.